The Last Hope for Extending Long-Term Unemployment Insurance May Have Just Gone Poof

—By Patrick Caldwell |

It's been seven months since Congress let long-term unemployment insurance benefits lapse, but last week only brought more bad news for the job seekers hoping that House Republicans might relent and allow a vote on extending benefits. When the House passed a temporary patch to the Highway Trust Fund on Tuesday, they tapped into an idea called pension smoothing to pay for the cost—an accounting trick that changes the formula companies use for contributing to pensions, but a necessary measure since Republicans in the House have refused to approve spending unless it's offset by new revenue. The only problem? That was the same mechanism Democrats had planned to use to pay for an unemployment insurance bill, leaving liberals at a loss for how to convince the GOP to get on board with an extension of unemployment benefits.

"The Republican majority says suffer some more families, you deserve it," Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said outside the Capitol last Wednesday afternoon. "Stop fiddling while Rome burns, while these folks have nowhere to go."

DeLauro was one of a string of speakers at the fifth Witness Wednesday event, a regular gathering convened on the Capitol lawn by the Center for Effective Government to highlight the stalled legislation. At the event, a series of Democratic House members—including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)—and the heads of various nonprofits read letters from unemployed Americans calling for Congressional action. But there was a distinct lack of unemployed people in attendance to speak for themselves; as a spokeswoman for the Center for Effective Government told me beforehand, it's a constituency that typically lacks the funds to travel to DC to press their cause. (There are plenty of unemployed people in DC, of course, but they also lack elected representation).

The absence of widespread public pressure has been part of Democrats' problem as they push for renewing benefits. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), the sponsor of the House's unemployment bill, told me he doesn't think Republicans will budge unless public pressure mounts. "People outside of Washington have to get engaged. We can't fix it alone."

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/congress-unemployment-insurance-extension